Hard Landing Read online

  Bullfrog's red lounge chair floated quietly overhead, with his long, narrow feet paddling him leisurely about. Those feet, matched with Bullfrog's lean length, made him a fast and tireless swimmer—hence the nickname Bullfrog, which was especially fitting since his first name was Jeremiah, the amphibian hero of the famed song.

  A trio of women sat in the water on the steps, their shapely thighs and calves visible for Brant's viewing pleasure. Right beside him, also at the bottom of the pool, Corey Cooper had turned his head to regard him warily. The grin Brant sent him had Cooper jackknifing toward the surface for a much-needed breath.

  Brant waited for the lieutenant to refill his lungs before he jerked Cooper's feet out from under him. And then the roughhousing began.

  Cooper's lankiness gave him a slight advantage, allowing him to sip in quick gulps of air by pushing off the bottom of the pool to crest the surface. Brant didn't always have that luxury. Nor could he hold his breath for five minutes like Cooper could, but what he lacked in length and lung capacity, he made up for in agility, honed reflexes, and eight years of experience compared to Cooper's three. In an impressively short amount of time—and to the accompanying cheers of his teammates—he twisted Cooper into a hold the Charlie Platoon leader couldn't break and made him cry uncle.

  Huffing from the effort it had taken to trounce the younger man, Brant ruffled Cooper's hair good-naturedly. Out the corner of his eye, he spied Rebecca smiling at him wryly, and he checked the urge to send her a victor's grin. Every eye at the party was trained on him, making that unwise, so he grinned at Sam instead.

  Then he heaved himself out of the water to drip dry. Only then did he allow himself to glance back at Rebecca, who was staring at his torso. She jerked her gaze away at once, but it was too late. He'd seen that stunned and hungry look on other women's faces. The gratification that slammed through him was as satisfying as it was inappropriate.

  Water dripped off his hair and slid down his back. No! he told himself sternly, in the voice of the grandfather who'd helped his single mother raise him. That woman is off-limits.

  Not because she was married—hell, he'd had affairs with plenty of married women. Not even because she was his CO's wife and hitting on her was tantamount to committing suicide. But, oddly enough, because he really liked her. Respected her. The code he'd established from the age that he'd become sexually active was inviolable. He never had sex with a woman that he truly liked. That way he'd never make the mistake his father made.

  He'd been told by other guys that his code made no sense. To him it made perfect sense. He could be exactly like the man his father was—charismatic, athletic, and fun to be with, but with one big difference. He'd never break a woman's heart like his father had broken his mother's when he'd made her believe in a future together.

  The trick was never to do that. Never spend quality time with any one of them; that way they never got ideas that led them to heartbreak.

  His approach to relationships had worked beautifully for twelve years. He saw no reason to alter it. But what if Rebecca was right? What if he'd become such a player that he couldn't go without sex for a week?

  Nah, he'd done that plenty of times. Every time he went on an operation, in fact, where access to women was impossible, and he had no choice. But that's different, his conscience argued, from voluntarily going without.

  Unsettled by his potential character flaw, he leaped to his feet to fetch something to eat.

  An hour later, thoroughly air-dried, satiated with beer and bratwurst, he sat in the shadows of the trellis holding Maddy and Sam's baby so the couple could enjoy a moment in the pool. Baby Melinda lay in the crook of his arm, wearing a tiny pink cotton jumper. Her cheeks had gotten plump in the two weeks since she'd been born. She might look just like a doll with her dark hair and feathery eyelashes, but Brant mused that the critical way she inspected him betrayed burgeoning intelligence and her mother's discriminating taste.

  He made a face at the baby to gauge her reaction. Her intense stare resembled a frown of disapproval. Wondering what she'd do if he crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue simultaneously, he tried it. The reaction he got wasn't one that he expected as she eliminated suddenly and powerfully into her diaper. Then, to his consternation, her face crumpled, and she loosed a whimper of discomfort that grew into a plaintive wail.

  Oh, crap—literally.

  Alarmed, he sought to catch Maddy's or Sam's eye, but they were soaking in the far end of the pool, totally engrossed in each other. Someone had cranked up the stereo, and the music drowned out the baby's cry, which would normally have brought Maddy flying to the rescue.

  Bullfrog, still floating on the lounge chair, took note of his predicament and raised his cup to toast him. Brant cast his gaze around for a pacifier or a bottle—anything to stop the baby's crying. Hell if he was going to change her diaper. He was about to get up and carry Melinda over to her parents when a shadow fell over him, cast by the sinking sun and Rebecca's petite but toned frame.

  "Need help?" she drawled. Amusement sparkled in her eyes.

  "Uh, yeah. I think she soiled herself."

  He came out of his chair to pass off the baby, and his knuckles accidently brushed the curve of her breast. The sudden appearance of her nipples against the fabric of her sundress was as instantaneous as it was unmistakable. Keeping her gaze locked on the baby, she pretended not to notice, but the telltale pulse fluttering in the hollow between her delicate collar bones betrayed her heightened awareness, while the sight of her erect nipples kept him tongue-tied.

  Damn it, Adams. Are you really such a horny bastard?

  The baby fell immediately quiet. Of course she did. Rebecca worked as a nurse in the ER, and her sweet face was a reflection of her nurturing nature.

  "Don't worry, we'll get you changed," she crooned, rocking Melinda with instinctive skill and making Brant wonder why she had no children of her own yet.

  "Why don't you and Max have a kid yet?" He blurted his thoughts out loud without meaning to.

  She visibly stiffened. "It just hasn't happened," she answered vaguely.

  Low blow, Adams. "I'm sorry—" He started to apologize, but she waved him off and turned away to pick up Melinda's diaper bag.

  "You sure Maddy wants you to do that?" he asked as she spread a cloth on a lounge chair nearby and laid the baby down on it, clearly intending to change her diaper.

  "I babysat Melinda just the other day." Just the same, she checked over her shoulder. "See, Maddy's fine with it."

  Brant followed her gaze and found the new mother observing them with a grateful smile.

  He then watched Rebecca whisk away the soiled diaper, wipe down the area with competent thoroughness, and gird the baby in a fresh diaper, and he couldn't help but admire her gracefulness.

  The sinking sun put a luster in her dark hair. A light layer of perspiration shone on her forehead and on the smooth skin of her breasts which her gaping neckline revealed to him. Strange how he knew her well enough to sense that she couldn't wait to have children of her own. What an incredible mother she would make, too. Maybe it was Max who wasn't ready.

  "There, all done," she declared, putting the diaper bag away and lifting the baby in her arms again. Meeting Brant's gaze, she sent him a rueful smile. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"

  Ignoring her question, he put one of his own to her. "You want to tell me what's eating you tonight?"

  Her rueful smile promptly fled. Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she glanced over her shoulder at Max before turning back to him with a crease between her eyebrows. "You have to promise not to tell anyone else," she murmured earnestly.

  He sensed her nervousness spiking. "Of course."

  She looked down at the baby, fiddling with her bib. "I saw something last night that I don't think I was supposed to see." Her confession was so quiet he had to lean forward to catch every softly spoken word.

  "What do you mean? What'd you see exactly?"

  "Max
was using our home computer because his laptop is in the shop. He walked away from it, and that's when I saw it."

  Brant found himself glancing across the expansive patio, over the glistening surface of the shell-shaped pool and Bullfrog's long body splayed upon the floating lounge chair, to Max's rectangular frame at one end of an outdoor table. He was talking animatedly with Joe Montgomery, the HQ commander of Team 12.

  "What did you see?" He figured she must have caught Max communicating with a woman.

  "An investment account under Max's name with over fifty thousand dollars in it."

  His eyebrows shot up. "That's a nice chunk of change."

  "Right. Only, I've never heard of this investment company."

  "You mean he's hiding money from you?"

  She gave a slow nod. "Not only that, but we used to be in debt, and now we're not. Max has a tendency to buy things we can't afford, like the boat and the kit car. He took out a home equity line of credit on the house to pay for them and our monthly payments were huge. I thought we might lose the house to foreclosure, which would have embarrassed him to no end. Suddenly, the equity line is all paid off and he has money to spare."

  Her confession piqued Brant's interest. "Does he know you saw the account?"

  "Yes, he caught me looking at it." Her voice was grim, and he sensed it might have been a little scary to be caught by the CO. She took a deep breath and added, "He said that the money belonged to the task unit."

  "What?" He scoffed at the falsehood. "That's impossible. Our expenditures go through the Naval Special Warfare Group. What was the name of the investment firm?"

  "Emile Victor DuPonte," she murmured, looking more torn by the moment for having told him.

  Brant didn't need to say what she had to be thinking. If Max was hiding a sum that large from her, what else was he hiding?

  "I'm so sorry, Becca." He wished he had the right to give her the hug she clearly needed.

  She looked up from the baby, her eyes full of concern. "Please don't tell anyone."

  "I swear, I won't," he promised.

  She nodded, glanced over her shoulder, and saw that Maddy and Sam were climbing out of the pool, headed in their direction.

  Looking back at Brant she added, "Remember, you promised."

  She ought to know by now that she could trust him. "Not a word," he swore.

  Chapter 2

  Parking in their three-car garage, Rebecca exited her car and promptly disabled the home security system. The absence of Max's black Tahoe suggested he was still at work, but she wasn't naïve enough to just assume that was the case. It was just like him to mislead her into thinking he wasn't home, when, in fact, he was there studying her in secret. With the system disarmed, she entered the house, moving quietly through the laundry room and into the kitchen, listening for him.

  Mental games. Max played them with his SEALs to keep them on their toes; he inflicted them on his wife, too—sick bastard. She wished she had known before she married him that he would begin treating her like one of his underlings before the first year was out.

  As good as Max was at leading his men, he was lousy at inspiring tenderness within the marriage. Simple trips to the grocery store became tests she inevitably failed if she forgot an item, no matter how insignificant. A mistake in pairing up his socks gave rise to harsh lectures on the importance of paying attention to detail.

  If she were a fledgling Navy SEAL training for battle, she might appreciate Max's attempts to mold her into the perfect warrior. But she wasn't a warrior. She was a woman, and she would never be a perfect wife, though not for lack of trying. God knew, she had tried! But the more effort she put into pleasing him, the more faults he seemed to find. It had dawned on her, slowly at first, then more frequently and with increasing bitterness, that she would never be able to please him sufficiently. Never measure up to some ideal he had in his head. Lately, he had begun to extract retribution for her failures—no staying after work for yoga for a week; no trip to Hawaii to visit her mother; forcing her to wash and wax the car when she forgot to fill the tank on her way home from work.

  She'd bought self-help books. She tried to read parts of them out loud to him, to no avail. He'd made it clear he wasn't the one with the problems. She'd started visiting a counselor religiously. And she had prayed. She'd thought that with patience, she could teach Max how to be a loving, tender husband. But after two years, she was ready to admit that her commander wasn't going to change. Leaving him had become the only option. It was that or live a life of loneliness punctuated by fear of failure and his peculiar punishments.

  Stumbling across a secret bank account full of money and in his name had seemed a blessing. If only she could see it again, she could take a picture and prove that he was hiding money from her. That, in turn, could lead to grounds for divorce, or so she hoped. Where had it come from anyway?

  This was the first night all week that she had beat him home, giving her the perfect opportunity to search online. Leaving her nursing shoes by the dryer, she tiptoed through the kitchen in her socks. With the alarm turned off, she didn't worry that the motion-sensing cameras were filming her trek across the great room. They were meant to be a deterrent to thieves, but Rebecca was convinced Max used them more to keep an eye on her, taking her to task, for instance, if she dared to take a nap after work rather than starting on his supper.

  Apart from her own stealthy footfalls and the ticking of the clock in the parlor, the rooms stood still and quiet, suggesting that she was, in fact, alone—at least for a short while. She let out the breath she was holding.

  Slipping into his office, she dropped into the leather desk chair. Her heartbeat drowned out the humming of the computer as she waited for the CPU to boot up and for their network to connect with the internet. Max's laptop had contracted a virus and been sent to the repair shop, forcing him to use their home PC. If not for that circumstance, she might never have known that he was hoarding money she didn't know about.

  Opening her Facebook profile, just in case Max sprang out of nowhere, she accessed the browser's history, hoping to find a direct link to his account.

  There were two obstacles to leaving Max. The first was Virginia's old-fashioned policy that she had to have grounds for leaving him—either adultery, abusive behavior, desertion, or the fact that he'd been convicted of a crime. While Max's mental games were mildly abusive, it would be her word against his regarding the way he chose to punish her. She couldn't rely on a judge to view Max's controlling tactics as abusive. As far as she knew he wasn't cheating on her. He hadn't deserted her. That left his being convicted of a crime, which wasn't likely ever to happen unless she caught him doing something illegal.

  The second obstacle was that if she packed her bags and moved out to avoid more of Max's retaliation, he could accuse her of deserting him, which would likely result in her losing her half of their marital assets, plus any right to spousal support.

  In other words, she was stuck in her present hellhole unless she caught Max having an affair or committing criminal actions.

  One day she had dared to express her marital discontent in the hopes that Max would settle for a no-fault divorce. He had replied that she would "rue the day" she ever mentioned a divorce again.

  His vague but dire threat had sent her imagination running amuck. Intuition whispered that he would harm her somehow if she dared to defy his wishes. One thing she had discovered about Max was the no one defied him and got away with it.

  Leaning toward the monitor, she realized that the page she had viewed the other night with his account number on it had been deleted. Max had deleted the pages from the browser's history! If that didn't suggest he had something serious to hide, then nothing did. Disappointed, she leaned back into the heavy chair, thinking.

  Perhaps there were other secrets Max was keeping from her, other than those necessitated by his job. Closing the browser, she got up and left the office.

  Curiosity carried her to their master suite,
the last of four bedrooms situated off an L-shaped hallway. Light and airy, the room provided her sanctuary after long days in the ER. She had decorated it in lovely browns and teals in deference to her husband, whose only comment had been criticism that the curtains were too sheer.

  Approaching Max's dresser, she peeked into the elaborately carved teak box he'd brought back from his excursion to Malaysia. Brimming with business cards, pens, and loose change, she doubted it would yield any mysteries, as Max was careful to leave his work at the Spec Ops building on base, where he worked. Riffling through the contents, she found nothing suspicious.

  Still musing, she strode into their beige and burgundy bathroom to use the facilities. As she washed her hands, her gaze settled on Max's bottle of Viagra pills, hidden behind a row of vitamin bottles. She picked it up, surprised to see only a handful of pills remaining out of an original supply of thirty.

  The walls of the room shifted closer. Her heart beat a little faster. There were more pills missing than the number of times they'd had sex in the last year. Had he spilled them into the toilet by mistake? Or was Max having sex with other women?

  Oddly enough, the thought of him cheating inspired less dismay than the realization that the missing pills didn't constitute proof of adultery. She would have to hire a detective who would then have to catch Max in the act before she could claim infidelity on his part.

  She put the bottle back and left the bathroom.

  The framed photograph of the two of them on their wedding day drew her toward the dresser on which it sat. Max, wearing his dress-white uniform with its array of medals and ribbons, had looked so formidable next to his much younger wife. Twelve years her senior, it had never occurred to her until just then that she may have been looking for a father figure, someone with an excellent work ethic and proven track record. Someone who wouldn't leave his family and shirk his responsibilities the way her father had.

  My mistake, she conceded. She had clearly married Max for the wrong reasons, never once guessing how difficult her marriage would become. If only she could simply breathe and smile and enjoy life without constantly worrying about his ridiculous expectations. And worse, his demeaning punishments intended to teach her to do better.